Own Your Career

Owning your career seems like a pretty easy concept. But too many people too many times find they are frustrated or unfulfilled with their job, company, and/or career or just can't figure out what they want to do for a living. From lack of productivity to poor physical and psychological health, the negative effects of unhappy employment situations can be staggering on the workforce, family, and personal levels.

So the question is: how do you identify the right career, job, and company for you?

While part of the answer lays in commonly identified factors such as your education, skill sets, past work experience, and the interview process, none of these addresses the primary predictor of job success – your behavioral makeup, or temperament.

Temperament is an amalgamation of various individual personality traits such as level of urgency, people focus, independence, communication capabilities, and values. When measured, your temperament can provide great and valuable insight into your ability to function and succeed in numerous aspects of life, including your career.

Just as an individual has a temperament or personality so does every job, career, and company. And the personality of a job has little to do with the purely functional requirements of the work. Take accountants for example. Accounting seems like a pretty straight forward profession but while one company may want their staff accountants to be conservative and compliant another may expect them to be more flexible and proactive. So while both companies may require the same skill set and level of experience, an individual qualified for both positions may succeed in one but fail in the other due to a miss-fit of temperament. It is important to remember that unlike skills, which can be trained, personality factors are engrained and difficult to change.

So before you can own your career, it is highly advantageous to understand yourself. A detailed behavioral assessment will allow you to focus your job search and walk into every opportunity with the ability to assess whether the job and employer offer you the best chance for success – because they will be making the same judgment of you.

Austin Stonestreet is Vice President of Sales and a founder of H2 Workforce. He has years of experience working with companies and individuals on hiring processes and job fit measurement. H2 Workforce is a web-based provider of hiring tools and services for businesses and individuals. For more information on Behavioral Assessments please visit the company website at: www.h2workforce. or contact Austin at (704) 464-0011 ext. 1001/astonestreet@h2workforce.com